- DARPA’s new “VehicleForge” program is soliciting a 3-year, $1 M/year open-source collaboration platform for designing large cyber-electro-mechanical systems; channel members see it as a perfect fit for the SKDB (Structured Knowledge Design Base) and are assembling a proposal team that includes Todd Huffman, ARPAnet veteran Dave Brownell, and BRL-CAD maintainer Sean Morrison, with ~50 days left to submit.

- Current brain-interface hardware is being compared: the 20-year-old Utah array remains the clinical standard, while the BrainPort tongue-vision device and DIY alternatives such as BeagleBoard + Myvu goggles are discussed; neodymium finger magnets and nootropic stacks (Adderall, piracetam) are also mentioned as low-cost augmentation tools.

- A wearable “pants keyboard” concept—hip- or wrist-mounted for mobile interaction with a BrainPort terminal—was proposed and jokingly branded the “BryanPort,” illustrating the channel’s habit of rapid, low-cost hardware prototyping.

- Open-science tooling links shared include nanotools for converting PDB protein structures into Blender scenes, the ASE and CDK cheminformatics libraries, and ChemXSeer’s TableSeer project for automated extraction of data tables from scientific PDFs.

- The WSJ article “Gains in Bioscience Cause Terror Fears” is criticized for conflating DIYbio, Craig Venter, Ebola, and Al-Qaeda; participants dismiss backyard bioweapon scenarios as technically unrealistic and fear-mongering.

- A debate on body modification frames both transhumanism and transgenderism as expressions of self-determination, with current transsexual surgical protocols labeled “barbaric” compared to emerging regenerative and neuroprosthetic technologies.

- Hosting and bandwidth advice: Gandi.net cloud VPS is recommended for reliable, battery-backed service, while Cogent’s home fiber is praised for “abuse-friendly” terabyte-scale downloads, reflecting the channel’s need for high-bandwidth open-science distribution.

- Humanity+ governance drama includes a mid-election reset of board-vote tallies (Max More, Bryan Bishop, and Howard Bloom were early leaders) and a proposal to eliminate the membership system entirely to make the organization more open and participatory.